Setting Up Your Own Sentry Server

If you are hosting a Django site, Sentry will make your life easier.

After my review of various hosting companies I decided to put EnvelopeBudget.com on Webfaction. But, I was still impressed with Digital Ocean so I kept my virtual server. Why not? It's only $5 per month for full root access! Because all their servers have SSD's I'ver never seen a virtual server boot so fast. Soon will be the day when you will hear someone say, "remember when computers had moving parts?" I kept it because I figured I'd find a use for it eventually. Well, I found a use for it.

I love Sentry. We used it at SendOutCards to help us better manage our server errors. I think we were running a pre 1.0 release when it was just called django-sentry. It has come a long way. I set up an account on GetSentry.com and loved it. Since I'm bootstrapping a start-up, I decided to set up my own sentry server on my Digital Ocean account.

I documented the process I went through setting up the server.

Create Ubuntu 12.10 X32 Server droplet & ssh into it as root

# add non-root user
adduser sentry

# add to sudoers
adduser sentry sudo

# log out of root and log in as sentry
exit

# update the local package index
sudo apt-get update

# actually upgrade all packages that can be upgraded
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

# remove any packages that are no longer needed
sudo apt-get autoremove

# reboot the machine, which is only necessary for some updates
sudo reboot

# install python-dev
sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev

# download distribute
curl -O http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py

# install distribute
sudo python distribute_setup.py

# remove installation files
rm distribute\*

# use distribute to install pip
sudo easy_install pip

# install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper
sudo pip install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper

# to enable virtualenvwrapper add this line to the end of the .bashrc file
echo "" >> .bashrc
echo "source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh" >> .bashrc

# exit and log back in to restart your shell
exit

# make virtualenv
mkvirtualenv sentry_env

# install sentry
pip install sentry

# create settings file (file will be located in ~/.sentry/sentry.conf.py)
sentry init

# install postgres
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev

# install postgres adminpack
sudo -u postgres psql
CREATE EXTENSION "adminpack";
q

# change postgres password & create database
sudo passwd postgres
sudo su - postgres
psql -d template1 -c "ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD '<span class="highlight">changeme</span>';"
createdb <span class="highlight">your_sentry_db_name</span>
createuser <span class="highlight">your_sentry_user</span> --pwprompt
psql -d template1 -U postgres
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE <span class="highlight">your_sentry_db_name</span> to <span class="highlight">your_sentry_user</span>;
q
exit

# update config file to use postgres &amp; host (with vim or your editor of choice)
sudo apt-get install vim
vim .sentry/sentry.conf.py

The following are the contents of my sentry.conf.py file:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': '<span class="highlight">your_sentry_db_name</span>',
        'USER': '<span class="highlight">your_sentry_user</span>',
        'PASSWORD': '<span class="highlight">your_password</span>',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
    }
}

You will also want to configure your SMTP mail account. I just used my gmail account.

# going to need psycopg2
workon sentry_env
pip install psycopg2

# set up databse
sentry upgrade

# let's try it out!
sentry start

# install nginx
sudo apt-get install nginx

# remove the default symbolic link
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

# create a new blank config, and make a symlink to it
sudo touch /etc/nginx/sites-available/sentry
cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo ln -s ../sites-available/sentry

# edit the nginx configuration file
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/sentry

Here are the contents of my Nginx file:

server {
    # listen on port 80
    listen 80;

    # for requests to these domains
    server_name yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com;

    # keep logs in these files
    access_log /var/log/nginx/sentry.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/sentry.error.log;

    # You need this to allow users to upload large files
    # See http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpCoreModule#client_max_body_size
    # I'm not sure where it goes, so I put it in twice. It works.
    client_max_body_size 0;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:9000;
        proxy_redirect off;

        proxy_read_timeout 5m;

        # make sure these HTTP headers are set properly
        proxy_set_header Host            $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }
}

That's about it.

# restart nginx
sudo service nginx restart

I set up supervisor as recommend in the comments and the docs to keep sentry runny (though it has never crashed, it does make restarting easier)

sudo apt-get install supervisor
sudo vim /etc/supervisor/conf.d/sentry.conf

Add the following to the sentry.conf file:

[program:sentry-web]
directory=/home/sentry/
command=/home/sentry/.virtualenvs/sentry_env/bin/sentry start http
autostart=true
autorestart=true
redirect_stderr=true

Restart supervidord

sudo killall supervisord
sudo supervisord

Upgrading Sentry:

I've upgraded twice. It was a painless process...

workon sentry_env
pip install sentry --upgrade
sentry upgrade
sudo supervisorctl restart sentry-web